Crazy For You
by Poison Ivory
Summary: Helga and Arnold are reunited at Phoebe and Gerald's wedding, and neither of them are talking about what happened between them. But what did happen? Rated R for language and sexual situations. 4 and 5...the end!
1. OneUnoUn

Author's Note: Howdy, all!  Wow.  Okay, I have been working on this story for about three months now, and it was originally intended to be a one chapter songfic…and it sort of spiraled out of control.  ("It's aliiiiiive!  It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive!"  Okay, that's enough of that.)  Anyway, I decided to break it up into parts, because it's twenty-five pages long and that's a little ridiculous for one chapter, so it is now in five already-written parts.  If you like this, I'll post some more.  

I gave it a rating of R because, to quote Dave Barry (a GENIUS!  Oh, I love that man…) "_This is not a book for youngsters…_because some of the characters use Adult Language.  I did not necessarily _want_ the characters to use this type of language; some of them just went ahead and did.  That's how some characters are."  Plus, later on there's a sex scene…it's far from graphic, but it's there.  So just as a warning now…there is profanity.  There are sexual situations.  Even Phoebe curses.  If you think that's OOC, you've never seen a woman on her wedding day, and plus that's just my take on Phoebe (which will become clearer if I ever finish my little vignette on her in "Before Woman").  Anyway, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Hey Arnold! is not mine.  Phoebe is not mine, and Lila is not mine, and Arnold is not mine, and Sid is not mine, and Helga is not mine, and Gerald is not mine…you get the picture.

Crazy For You 

[1]

            _"Delayed?"_ Phoebe Hyerdahl shrieked at a decibel no one who knew her would have thought possible.  "What do you mean, _delayed_?"

            "Phoebe, calm down."

            "Why didn't anyone tell me this sooner?  I can't believe she called you three hours ago and you didn't tell me until now!"

            "We thought she would be here by now."  The taller, redheaded woman, wearing what appeared to be miles of twisted chiffon, ushered Phoebe to a chair and pushed a brimming champagne flute into her hand.  "Drink this."

            "I don't want it," Phoebe said, taking the glass and promptly downing half.  She set the remainder down on the vanity a little harder than she had intended, and two miniscule drops flung themselves onto the gleaming expanse of her white skirt.  She screamed again.

            "Perfect!  Just perfect!" she thundered, making a surprising amount of sound for such a small person.  "I'm getting married in"—she grabbed Lila's wrist—"forty seven and a half minutes, the flowers aren't set up, Gerald's senile great-grandmother is lost somewhere in New York City, my maid of honor is being held over in _Denver_, Colo_ra_do, on account of a fucking _blizzard_, in _May_, and now my six thousand dollar original Vera Wang wedding dress is _RUINED!!!"_

            The last word shook the crystal chandelier above their heads.  Lila could hear the triple exclamation point on the sentence.  "Phoebe…" she began.

            The door opened and a young man with a rather strangely shaped head that did not detract from his good looks peeked in.  "Uh…is everything alright?"  Seeing that Phoebe's eyes were nearly bugging, he directed the question elsewhere.  "Lila?"

            The redhead smiled tiredly at him, looking rather pretty despite the fact that her salmon pink bridesmaid's dress clashed repulsively with her hair.  "Getting there, Arnold.  Would you be a dear and get me some club soda?"

            "Gotcha."  Arnold ducked out the door.  Lila led a somewhat frozen Phoebe to the chair in front of the vanity and seated her forcibly.

            "Phoebe," she began, "if a tornado came along and whipped the entire wedding party away, and you had to get married in a burlap sack in the middle of an empty lot somewhere, Gerald would still love you with every last little neutron and quark in that oversized body of his.  And he would still marry you.  And he probably wouldn't even notice that anything had changed until he got the wedding photos back."

            A tiny smile snuck its way onto Phoebe's face.  "Well…"

            Arnold opened the door again, knocking on the frame gently.  "I come bearing seltzer," he announced.

            "Thanks, Arnold."  Lila took the glass from him, and, dabbing napkin in the club soda, began to work on the barely-visible yellow spots in Phoebe's skirt.  Arnold put a comforting hand on Phoebe's shoulder and made his report.

            "I put Rhonda to work directing the florists—you know she'll do a good job, and Nadine'll keep her from getting too out of hand.  Stinky found Nana Johansen sitting very contently at the Goldberg/Horowitz wedding in the synagogue two blocks over and brought her back here, and Timberly has been put in charge of her.  Gerald is very excited and eager, to the point of almost—not quite, but almost—losing his cool.  And you, my dear Phoebe, are very, very beautiful."  He dropped a light kiss one her forehead as he finished, and Phoebe exhaled for the first time in ten minutes.

            "Oh, that's such a relief.  Thank you, Arnold.  That's two things taken care of."

            "Three," Lila declared, holding up her napkin triumphantly.  "It's as good as new."

            "Now all we need is a maid of honor," Phoebe concluded, looking anxious again.

            Rhonda stuck her head in the door.  "Helga's here!"  Trailing flowers, she vanished.

            Phoebe's face lit up.  "I thought she was in Denver!"

            "Looks like she made it after all," Lila replied.

            Neither girl was looking at Arnold, who had blanched and then reddened at Helga's name.  "Um…I should go check on…um…Nana Johansen.  Yeah.  See you later!"  Before either woman could say anything, he was gone.

            Lila and Phoebe exchanged glances.  "They never…had anything, did they?" Lila asked.

            Phoebe shook her head.  "Helga had her thing for him—you knew about that—but they haven't seen each other in years, since…since graduation.  I've only seen Helga a couple of times myself since college."

            "In three years?"

            Phoebe shrugged, ducking her head.  "Well, you know—she's been busy."

            Lila's reply was cut off by the door flinging back on its hinges to crash into the wall.  Helga G. Pataki stood there, a stunning blonde in a tailored black business suit that showed off her killer legs.  Her pale gold locks were swept neatly back into a simple French twist, with not a hair out of place; her makeup was flawless; her suit and matching shoes were designer imports from Italy and the latest fashion.  It was no wonder tabloids all over the world reported that men were shooting themselves in the streets for her sake.

            Right now, she didn't look like she cared.  "Pheebs, I'm here!" she declared, running to her best friend, who rose to greet her.  They hugged, careful not to wrinkle Phoebe's gown.

            Phoebe's eyed were bright.  "Oh, Helga, I'm so glad you made it!"

            Helga looked like she was holding back a few tears herself.  "Wouldn't miss it, babe.  Wouldn't miss it."  She pulled back, holding Phoebe at arms length.  "My God, Pheebs, you look stunning."

            Phoebe blushed.  "I do not."

            "Hey," Helga admonished, wagging a finger in Phoebe's face.  "Have I ever lied to you?"

            "Well…"

            "Don't answer that."  Now Helga acknowledged Lila.  "Hey, Little Miss Perfect, how are you?"

            Lila smiled.  Helga had a name for everyone.  "Not bad."  The two exchanged an awkward hug.  "How's Hollywood?"

            Helga rolled her eyes.  "Decadent.  Sleazy.  A moral stinkbomb."  She grinned.  "So I fit right in, naturally."

            "Naturally."  Lila pointed to the armoire in the corner.  "Your dress is in there.  I'm going to go…uh…check on the flowers.  Bye."  She waggled her neatly manicured fingers at them and slipped out the door.

            Phoebe beamed, knowing Lila was giving the best friends a moment to themselves.  It was the first time the panic receded fully from her brown eyes.  "So how is my best friend, the big time Hollywood director?"

            Helga shook her head as she opened the closet door.  "Oh, no.  Don't you be calling me that.  I'm still just the bully on the playground here.  That's how I like it.  That way I'm not forced to do any 'favors.'"

            "What do you mean?"

            The blonde hung the dress in its protective black bag on the inside of the closet door and started to unzip it as she explained.  "Like getting people parts, jobs, autographs…stuff like that.  Like to get here I had to convince this millionaire to let me borrow his plane and fly in a blizzard, but I promised to let his daughter meet Josh Hartnett—who's cute, but kind of an airheaded pretty boy.  We bonded over unibrows at a cocktail party once.  And I had to promise the pilot a walk-on in my next movie to get him to fly in that weather.  But I'm here."  She smiled at Phoebe, then took her first look at her dress.

            "_Pink?_"

            Phoebe set her chin stubbornly.  "Come on, you used to love pink."

            Helga looked back at the dress, one eyebrow raised disdainfully.  "I know, but…_pink_?"  She glanced at Phoebe, who was still staring her down.  "Only for you, Pheebs," she relented.  "Only for you."

            Phoebe's gaze shifted to the clock, and panic flooded her face again.  "Omigod!  You only have thirty-two minutes!"

            "Pheebs…"

            "But your hair isn't ready, and your makeup isn't done, and…"

            Helga shrugged.  "No sweat.  Now.  Watch and learn."

            In one graceful movement, she dumped her purse out on the vanity counter.  Tubes of makeup rolled everywhere.  She glanced up at the mirror.

            "Okay, let's see…"  She swept on some eye shadow, rimmed her eyes with brown eyeliner, and added another coat of mascara to her impossibly long lashes.  A bit of blush with an enormous brush defined her high, elegant cheekbones; a touch of deep rose lipstick completed the job.

            "How'd I do?" she asked Phoebe, who was watching her anxiously.  "Two and a half minutes?  Not bad."

            Phoebe handed her a tissue.  "Blot, and t-zone."

            "Oh, yeah."  Helga blotted her lips, and ran the enormous brush over her forehead, nose, and chin.  "Thanks.  Now the dress."

            Throwing the black bag on the floor, Helga shook out the dress and unzipped the back, getting it ready to throw on.  She stripped off her jacket, skirt, and shirt while Phoebe took them and hung them up on spare hangers in the closet.  Suddenly Helga's face fell.

            "Shoes!" she cried.  Phoebe shook her head with a smile and held up a pair of pink sandals.

            "Six and a half, right?"  Helga nodded.  "You always did have tiny feet."

            Helga grinned at the sandals as she struggled into the dress, stepping into it from the top.  "Ah, four inch heels.  You know me so well, Phoebe Hyerdahl."

            Phoebe grinned right back.  "Of course.  We figured there was no risk of you towering over anyone, since you're walking down the aisle with Arnold."

            The color receded rapidly from Helga's face.  "_Arnold?_"

            Phoebe shrugged, pretending not to notice Helga's reaction.  "Yeah, he's like, gargantuan.  Gerald's taller, but that's mostly hair."  She glanced back at her best friend, who still wore a look on her face like she had been slapped—as if anyone had the guts to slap Helga Pataki.  Well, besides Phoebe.

            "What's wrong, Helga?" she asked innocently.

            The mask slipped back on.  "Wrong?  Nothing's wrong.  Haven't seen him in years, that's all.  How is the old Football Head?"

            "He's fine," Phoebe replied, averting her eyes as Helga slipped off her bra, which wouldn't have looked very good with the strapless dress.  Helga's sense of modesty was not exactly overdeveloped.  She was about to offer to zip up the dress, since Helga seemed to be having some trouble with it, when the door opened and Sid barged in.

            "Phoebe, Gerald wants to know if—"  His voice cut off abruptly as he caught sight of Helga, who quickly folded her arms over her bare chest and directed her trademark scowl at the intruder.  Sid didn't notice, his eyes fixed on the portion of her now blocked by her arms.  "Uh…"

            "Sid, you do realize that if you don't leave this room immediately, I will have you whacked, right?" Helga said coldly.

            "Right!  Uh, sorry…uh…"  Still staring, Sid stumbled backwards out of the room, closing the door as an afterthought.

            Helga blew a strand of hair out of her eyes, clearly irritated.  Not that no one had ever seen her breasts before, or that she particularly cared about maintaining any illusion of virginity, but she knew Sid would be obnoxious about this later.  "Perfect.  There's the icing on the cake I was waiting for," she muttered to Phoebe.  "Can you zip me up?"

            "Sure."  She did, thinking that Helga didn't seem all too upset about Sid's intrusion.  In a way, she thought that Helga was grateful to have an excuse to change the subject.  _Even after all these years, she still can't talk about Arnold_, she thought sadly, knowing that her friend needed desperately to unblock her emotional constipation where a certain football-headed someone was concerned.

            Phoebe had no idea that Helga had already unburdened herself to someone.

            Arnold.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

            They met in the antechamber the wedding party was supposed to wait in.  Arnold, never comfortable in a suit at the best of times, was positively schvitzing now, anxiously awaiting Helga's appearance.  He hoped she looked awful.  He hope that after her hectic flight, her hair was in disarray, and there were bags under her eyes big enough to pack for a week in Paris in, and the dress didn't fit that well and looked horrible with her skin tone or her hair, or…or something.

            Four minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start, the door to the antechamber opened, and Helga and Phoebe rushed in.

            Damn.

            She looked great.

            No, she looked more than great.  She looked _phenomenal_.  Once again, Helga's ability to handle herself in a crisis and still come off looking like she'd just stepped off of the cover of _Vogue_ left him virtually speechless.  Her gown was lighter than the Pepto-Bismol pink of the other bridesmaids, the color of a blushing, nearly white rose.  It made her flawless skin look like fresh cream, like the porcelain of a priceless doll.  The gown was strapless, exposing the elegant lines of her neck and shoulders.  That, coupled with the way the gown hugged her very sensual body, brought a slight flush to his cheeks that he hoped no one noticed.  He remembered all too well the things that body could do, and how that skin felt, and he didn't want to think of it now.  Thinking of it every night was enough.

            She glanced at him, and that was worse.  Unlike the other bridesmaids, who'd left their hair down and placed a wreath of pink flowers on their heads like tiaras, the maid of honor was given the privilege of wearing hers up, with the flowers entwined in the complicated knot at the back of her head.  This not only saved Helga from looking like the flower girl (who was Jamie-O's insanely adorable four-year-old daughter), but it highlighted the smooth planes of her cheeks and forehead, while the soft rosebuds and sweat peas twined in her sunshine locks brought out an answering blush in her cheeks.  Her mouth was a bow tied around a titillating secret.

            Arnold leaned against the nearest wall in what he hoped was a casual manner, but more to keep himself from stumbling than anything else.  Good God, it wasn't fair.  Why did she have to look so good?  _She'd_ been the one in the wrong, not him.  Shouldn't she be looking like something the cat had dragged in?  Wasn't there any justice in this world?

            Well, he wasn't about to go over to _her_.  She could just come to him when it was their turn to walk down the aisle.  He didn't care if he was acting like a pouting three-year-old…it was his turn to, wasn't it?

            He watched as she hugged Phoebe quickly, nodded greeting to Rhonda, Jamie-O, and the others, and walked over to him.  He kept his eyes hooded lazily, knowing that they would be too easy to read otherwise.

            "Hello, Arnold," she said, looking up at him.  He felt a small surge of triumph at being taller than her, when all through their childhood and most of their adolescence she had towered over him.  God, he was being a child.

            "What, no Football Head?" he asked.  "Hair Boy?  Arnoldo?"

            Her mask of courtesy disappeared at the bitter tone of his voice.  "Grow up, Arnold.  I don't want to do this any more than you do."

            "Then why did you even bother coming?" he demanded, hating the immaturity she brought out of him.

            Helga replied in a very fast, very low whisper, through tightly clenched, perfect teeth.  "Because Phoebe is my best friend, and Gerald is…here also…and if you ruin Phoebe's wedding I swear to God I'll kick your ass, so suck it up and play nice, okay?"

            Arnold glared at her, wishing he could pack that much venom into a single sentence.  "Fine."

            "Good."  Immediately, Helga's façade came up again.  "Now, we're on.  Give me your arm."

            Arnold realized then that he had been hearing the organ for some time and ignoring it.  Trying to suppress another wave of appreciation for Helga's ability to multitask, he offered his arm.  Helga took it, and he noticed with some pleasure—okay, a lot of pleasure—that her hand was trembling slightly, and her elbow's grip was tighter than usual.

            The doors were opened for them, and they set off down the aisle.  Heads turned as they made their progress, and Arnold caught admiring glances which he assumed, half-correctly, were all for Helga.  A little old lady halfway down the aisle clued him in on the truth, as she whispered none too softly to her companion, "What an adorable couple."

            Arnold kept his face stoic, but felt Helga's fingers tighten on his wrist, and he knew she had heard it too.  He wouldn't have been surprised if she had smiled; she had a highly cultivated appreciation for the ironic.  He lifted his head higher, but the woman's words had cut him to the quick, and inside he was biting his tongue to keep his face composed.  Glancing at Helga, he wondered how it was that she could look so calm and serenely lovely, how she managed to walk like her feet weren't touching the floor.

            He supposed he loved her still.

            They reached the altar, and Arnold took his place beside Gerald, whose face was distorted with the effort of displaying panic and elation at the same time.  He smiled reassuringly at Gerald, then turned to watch the rest of the wedding party enter, avoiding Helga's eyes.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

            He supposed it was all his fault.  Helga would have made it out that way, at least.  But he did ask for the assignment.

            He was working for the New York _Times_.  Which was a prestigious enough thing to say in casual conversation at a cocktail party, but the reality was somewhat less exciting.  He wanted to uncover sordid business practices in elephantine corporations, ferreting out Justice with his lethal mightier-than-the-sword pen, or Dell laptop, as the case might be.  But he was put to work covering things like school board elections—or worse, writing up obituaries and engagement announcements.  The engagement announcements were the worst, especially after Elizabeth left him.

He'd met Elizabeth at Columbia.  She'd been a perky redheaded pre-med who he'd bumped into on the famous steps that dominated any image of the campus.  They were expansive, white and gleaming, stretching across the Athenian figure of the library that sat at the summit.  It was the October of their junior year, a particularly brisk October, and the wind had whipped her papers out of her hands.  Gallant as always, he'd attempted to pick them up, running up and down the steps like an idiot as he gathered her things.

But she'd appreciated the effort, and wound up being the one to ask _him_, to coffee, while he tried to work up the nerve.  They'd bonded, and were soon inseparable, living together their senior year.  After five years of dating, while he slogged along at the _Times_ and she worked her way through med school, he'd gotten into the habit of wandering into Tiffany's on his lunch break and looking over the engagement rings.  

Something always stopped him just as he was about to make a purchase, though.  Did he really love her?  Really?  He wasn't sure.  The point turned out to be moot, though, because just as he decided that it was now or never, Elizabeth announced that she was leaving him for some tanned, musclebound skiing instructor named _Lars_.

Lars.  Who the hell was named _Lars_ anyway?

            So he was lonely, and betrayed, and on top of it, the work at the _Times_ was getting worse and worse.  And then, quite suddenly, it got better.  When the top feature writer on the staff drove his SUV deliberately into the editor-in-chief's three-day-old Porsche, he was fired so fast you could practically see the scorch marks on his employee parking spot.  Everyone got shifted up a notch, and Arnold suddenly found himself writing a feature on some blind eight-year-old cello virtuoso.  Which was when he discovered he could write features, and write them well.

            Surprisingly, the editor, who was usually about as perceptive as Mr. Magoo, realized Arnold's talent too.  Soon he was writing feature after feature, interviewing interesting and semi-famous people, tracking down all the aspects of offbeat and colorful stories.  He actually got fan mail.  Well, one letter, and it was from a subject's grandmother in Toledo, but it was exciting.  He didn't even know they _got_ the _Times_ in Toledo.

            He was working on a feature about a goldfish breeder when another journalist, a scrawny, vulgar-looking guy named Mark, stood by his desk, his ever-present mug of coffee in one hand, and a pencil which Arnold was sure he never used in the other.

            "You know who got the interview yet?" Mark asked in his reedy voice.

            "Interview?" Arnold replied, eyebrows knit as he typed away at his lead.

            "The interview everyone's fighting over.  The one in L.A."

            Now Arnold paused in his typing and looked up.  "With who?"

            Mark threw back his head and laughed.  Arnold winced.  "Oh, come on, Arnold.  You can't be _that _oblivious.  Everyone's been talking about it for weeks.  A chance to go to L.A. and interview a damn fine woman…"

            "Who?" Arnold repeated, growing tired of this game.

            Mark let the name drop off his tongue and sit in the air like a big, fat land mine.  "Helga G. Pataki."

            Arnold's eyes widened.  "_Helga?_"

            Mark grinned—this was the reaction he'd been aiming for.  Well, sort of.  "Yeah.  What, are you on some first-name basis with her?"

            Arnold chuckled.  "Well, yeah…I grew up with her."

            Now it was Mark's turn to gape.  "You're shitting me."

            "Nope."

            "You're _shitting_ me."

            "Unh-unh."

            "Helga Pa_ta_ki?  The di_rec_tor?"  Arnold nodded.  "Fuck off!"

            "I've known her since I was three," Arnold clarified, smiling fondly at the memory.  "We went to pre-school through high school together.  God, she was a little bitch.  A great kid.  But a bitch."

            Mark snorted.  "Was she always as hot as she is now?"

            Arnold laughed.  "Hardly.  She was an ugly little thing."

            "You're _shitting_ me."

            Arnold raised an eyebrow.  "What does that even mean?"

            Mark shrugged.  "Yeah, well, who cares?  She's hot now."

            "She makes good movies."

            "Fuck her movies.  She's hot."

            Arnold pondered.  "I don't even know what she looks like now.  I've seen a bunch of her movies, but…"

            "Look her up, dude."

            "Dude?"  But Arnold clicked on the little Internet Explorer icon at the bottom of his screen and typed Helga's name into a search engine.

            His search brought up a number of sites, and a picture of her.  He clicked on it to enlarge, studying it.  Finally he looked back up at Mark.

            "Yeah, she's hot."

            "Told you," Mark replied, looking satisfied.

            Arnold looked at the picture again.  Helga had been attractive in high school, but she hadn't looked like this.  The picture showed her standing next to Kevin Spacey and Michelle Pheiffer, who had been in her last movie, _Ruby_.  She was pointing to something off camera, squinting in the sunlight behind thin wire frames.  Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, with some loose wisps tucked behind her ears, and she wore a white tank top and low-slung jeans that showed a strip of flat, pale tummy.  The glasses made her eyes hard to see, as did the grainy resolution of the picture, but Arnold remembered them.  They were blue, and had been strangely haunting even when Helga had been at her ugliest and meanest—especially then, as if to tell you that the ugly, mean side she was showing was not, and could never be, all of her.

            "So, you gonna try for the interview?  Free trip to L.A., man," Mark was saying.  It snapped Arnold out of his reverie.  He shrugged.

            "Nah, I don't think so.  After all," he grinned, "my best friend is engaged to her best friend.  I can get her number anytime."

            "Fuck you," Mark growled good-naturedly.  "I gotta get back to work."  He laughed at the facetiousness of the remark.  "See you around."

            "See ya."

            Arnold turned his attention back to his computer screen, intending to finish his article, but his eyes snagged on the picture of Helga.  He stared at her.  Yeah, she was hot.  No, she was beautiful.  And hot.

            He clicked off of Internet Explorer.  Well, he'd always seen potential in the girl, especially after she hit puberty and tweezed that eyebrow.  She'd actually been very pretty in high school, now that he remembered, with a sort of…sylphlike grace.

            Oh, well.  She probably barely remembered him.  It was even worse to go barging into an interview expecting recognition than it was to go with no ties from the past.  And if she did remember him, it would be vaguely, as some kid she hated.  And California was probably overcrowded and rainy this time of year, so there was no point in even heading out that way.

            No, he was better off here, writing about his goldfish.  He was content.  He was happy.  Why push it?

            Three minutes later, Arnold was standing in front of his editor's desk, pleading for the chance to fly to California and interview Helga G. Pataki, the bane of his fourth-grade existence.

Whatdja think?  Lemme know!  -PI


	2. TwoDosDeux

[2]

            The incredibly loud chords coming from the organ directly behind Arnold startled him out of memory.  By the way everyone was standing up and Gerald and Phoebe were running happily down the aisle, he guessed that the ceremony was over.  He marveled that he had been able to hand over the wedding rings without realizing it.

            Helga was glaring at him.  "Come on," she hissed, grabbing his arm.

"Huh?"  Why couldn't he be eloquent around her?

"We have to leave the church, space cadet.  Jeez, and you actually _went_ to the rehearsal dinner."

They ran back down the aisle in Phoebe and Gerald's wake, the rest of the wedding party falling in behind them.  "Where were _you_ during the ceremony anyway?" Helga asked.

"Nowhere."  Arnold was tempted to tell her to mind her own beeswax, but she already thought he was being a child.

As they walked through the antechamber and into the hallway, Helga dropped Arnold's arm as if it were something radioactive and toxic.  "Now where?" she asked.

"Where what?"

"Where's the re_cep_tion?  _Honestly_, Arnold…"

He glared at her.  "Would you like to stop picking on me for one minute?  Just one?  Or are we nine again?"

Helga opened her mouth to fire back a sharp retort, then closed it.  When she opened it again, it was only to say, "Sorry, Arnold."

He was startled, and uncomfortably pleased.  "There's limos waiting to take us to the hotel that the reception's at."  He saw her fidgeting, and he _knew_ she was itching to say something about his ending a sentence with a preposition, but she kept her mouth shut.  Though he was relieved to escape a lecture on grammar, the disquieting quiet unnerved him.  It wasn't like her to back down on _anything_, and he wasn't sure why she was doing it now.

They walked in silence towards the aforementioned limos, and found that only one hadn't left yet, and was almost full, with Jamie-O, his wife and daughter, and the incredibly ancient Nana Johansen, who was wearing the look of complacency reserved only for those who have had absolutely no idea what's going on since the Reagan administration.

Murmuring greetings, Arnold and Helga squeezed into the limo.  Arnold found himself pressed against the door, his cheek flattened against the window, with Helga jammed in on his other side.  He tried to ignore her nearness, to ignore the curve of her hip and thigh against his leg, and the way her breast kept brushing up against his arm, but it wasn't easy.  He gazed out the window, not trusting himself to look at her.  He could only remember one other time he'd felt this uncomfortable—when he'd arrived in L.A. to interview her.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

He had been given directions to the set by his editor, and was now sitting in a shaded area with some crew members who were on a break.  It was furiously hot in L.A., and Arnold felt stupid and conspicuous in his dress shirt and nice slacks.  He watched what proceedings he could see with interest; he'd never been on a movie set before.

This one was a dramedy called _Three Months_—at least, that was the working title.  It was, as far as he gathered, about an eccentric mother, played by Gena Rowlands, who had had three daughters with three different husbands, each of whom she'd named after the months they were born in—April, May, and June, who were played by Madonna, Jennifer Aniston, and Julia Stiles, respectively.  April was a CEO who was having an affair with a much younger man, played by some kid from _Boy Meets World_, May was a concert violinist whose husband (Tim Allen) had died in a freak accident involving a street sweeper, leaving her to raise their two children (Haley Joel Osment and the daughter from _Gilmore Girls_), and June was the prostitute with the heart of gold, who runs away from home at 14 to join the circus as a trapeze artist but had to retire due to a knee injury.  Kevin Bacon, Harrison Ford, and John Ritter played the various fathers.

It was an interesting experiment, but Arnold had no doubt Helga could make it work.  Right now they were on location in some outdoor mini-mall plaza thing that had been shut down for the day, though the throng of over-excited extras rushing around belied the fact.  This, apparently, was the scene of confrontation between the nineteen-year-old ex-trapeze artist prostitute and her father, Kevin Bacon, over the money she had stolen from him at his surprise birthday party.  The reason she had stolen it was because the daughters, all of whom were the results of deliberately poked holes in Gena Rowlands' diaphragms, were planning to take a hit out on their rather insane mother, but of course she wasn't going to tell Kevin Bacon that.

Arnold wasn't getting a lot of stimulating conversation from the crew members seated with him, who were now engaged in a burping contest, interspersed with monosyllabic conversation about the hotness of various far-too-young-for-them celebrities, such as Britney Spears or the Olsen twins.  On his yellow steno pad, Arnold jotted down as many details of the movie as he could, which wasn't many, as well as some background facts about Helga, which he knew as well as anyone.  Born in Brooklyn, straight-A student, daughter of the famous Bob of Big Bob's Beeper Empire, which was still going strong, although it had passed into the joint hands of Helga and her sister Olga's husband, Eliot…

Staring at his lists of facts, Arnold realized he knew next to nothing about Helga that he could put down as trivia.  He could describe her as a child—but he knew that wouldn't amount to a very flattering portrayal of her, and he didn't want to run some nasty tell-all, if only for the self-serving reason that he knew Helga would kill him.  That is, if she was still like the Helga he knew.

Was she, though?  What if she didn't remember him at all?  He could just see it…

He'd walk into her trailer, or whatever, and she'd be sitting there with Harrison Ford and that _Boy Meets World_ kid, talking about some scene and drinking caramel machiatos from Starbucks, and he'd be like, Hey, Helga, remember me?  And she'd give him a weird look like she'd never seen him before, and ask, Aren't you the reporter from the _Times_?  And he'd say, Well, yeah, but we went to school together.  You used to call me Football Head, and Arnoldo, and Hair Boy, and geek bait, and moron…and he'd trail off because there'd be no look of recognition in her eyes, and he'd say, You know, we were in _Romeo and Juliet_ together.  We saved the neighborhood.  We spent our summers together at the Jersey shore.  You shot spitballs at me.  And then her face would light up, and she'd say, Oh, _Arnold_, that doofus I used to torture.  Yeah, I remember you.  You were that orphan kid, right?  Oh, by the way, I wasn't shooting spitballs at you, I was shooting them at Gerald.  He was so cute…which of course she would think because everyone thought that Gerald was cuter than Arnold, even _Arnold_ thought that Gerald was cuter than Arnold, at least he would if he thought that way, which he didn't, because he was straight, even though he was neat and thin and personable and not completely girl crazy even during the height of puberty, which didn't mean that he was gay, it just meant that he had manners and self-control, and just about the time that he was thinking those thoughts Helga would say, You were gay, weren't you? and he'd say No! in utter shock and the _Boy Meets World_ kid would snort into his machiato and Harrison Ford would hide a smile and Arnold would glare at them because let's face it, being on _Boy Meets World_ is not exactly going to earn you an Emmy, but he doesn't say anything to Harrison because he's still a little scared of Indiana Jones _and_ Han Solo and that guy from _The Fugitive_ all in one, even despite the bombs in Harrison's career, of which there have been many, but even so, these two guys, even this stupid Mr. I've-been-starring-in-an-ABC-sitcom-through-all-my-adolesence-and-half-my-adult-life, can get into any party and do anything and he's sure that no one would ever leave them for some guy named _Lars_ with his oh-so-sexy Austrian accent and his three million sparkling white teeth and his biceps that are bigger than Arnold's head, which is a pretty big head, but hey, you know what they say about guys with big heads…nothing, they don't say anything, which is a shame, because if they _were _to say it, it would be true, but Helga will never know that, and what is he thinking, he doesn't want to sleep with Helga Pataki!…well, actually he _does_, what red-blooded man in his right mind wouldn't?  I mean, look at that body!…but she definitely doesn't want to sleep with him, she's probably sleeping with Harrison, or maybe even _Boy Meets World_ guy over there, with the foam from his machiato all over his chin, which is even worse than _Lars_…

"Excuse me?"

Arnold snapped out of his daydream.  A young man was standing there, holding a clipboard and looking anxiously down at him.  "Are you the reporter from the _Times_?" he asked.  Arnold nodded.  "Follow me, please."

The assistant led Arnold through the set, stopping when they reached the largest trailer and rapping on the door.  "Come in," a woman's voice called.

The assistant stepped back and looked at Arnold expressionlessly.  He nerved himself, and opened the door to the trailer, stepping inside.

The trailer was dark and cramped.  There was a curtain separating it in half—he assumed the back half was Helga's personal area.  The half he could see was crowded with all sorts of equipment he would never in a million years be able to use and at least several hundred pages of screenplay tossed haphazardly about.  Helga was sitting cross-legged in the only chair, in denim shorts and a red tank top, watching a monitor.  She was leaning forward intently, her hands tucking her straight, white blonde hair behind her ears.  He heard the _Boy Meets World_ guy's voice on the monitor and winced.

"Hold on," Helga said, holding up a hand towards him, not looking at him.  Her voice was low, sultry, and mature; her feet were bare and dirty.  She continued to watch the monitor.  Suddenly she sat bolt upright.  "Ah hah!" she cried triumphantly, pointing to the screen.  Arnold wasn't sure if she was talking to him or not.  "_There_ it is!  He finally got it!"  She gazed at the screen for a few minutes longer, shaking her head with a rueful smile.  "Lord, but I wish that boy could act."

Arnold suddenly felt much better.

Satisfied, Helga turned off the monitor and looked up at him.  "Sorry about that, I'm—"

Her jaw dropped.  She stared at him, her mouth opening and closing several times, before she could speak.  "_Arnold_?"

Well, at least she remembered him.

He gave a sideways grin.  "Yep.  It's me."

She was still staring at him, incredulously.  "Oh my God.  Arnold."

Okay, this was uncomfortable.  "In the flesh."

Suddenly she smiled, standing up to greet him.  "I'm sorry, I'm being so rude.  I'm just surprised to see you.  How are you?"  To his very great surprise, she hugged him.

Not knowing what else to do, he hugged her back.  "I'm pretty good.  You?"

"Can't complain."  She released him and looked him up and down.  "You look good," she remarked.

He actually blushed.  "Thanks.  You do, too.  Great, in fact."

"Ah, you're just trying to show me up."  She looked up at him, and he was struck by the fact that she was shorter than him.  Had he been taller than her in high school?  He couldn't remember.  "So, you work for the _Times_ now?"

He nodded.  "Oh, yeah.  Wielding my English major skills with a vengeance, writing for the common man.  Actually, I just got bumped up from obituaries and wedding announcements."

Helga laughed.  She had a throaty, titillating laugh.  "Well, somebody has to do it, right?  Anyway, congrats on the promotion, then."

"Thanks."

She looked around at the trailer.  "Geez, this place is a mess.  I try to spend as little time here as I can.  You hungry?"

Arnold considered.  He hadn't eaten since the flight, where he'd picked at the unidentifiable food the stewardess assured him was chicken marsala.  He suspected frequent travelers kept alive on a steady diet of peanuts.  "I could eat," he admitted.

"Let's go, then," Helga replied, heading for the door.  "I know a great place.  I'll take you out, you can interview me there.  Do you like Thai?"

"Oh, sure," Arnold replied.  "I grew up on boarding house food, I'll eat anything."

Helga laughed again.  She seemed to do that a lot.  "Okay.  We were calling it quits for the day, anyway.  I'll send everybody off and then we'll go."  She stepped out of the door, looking almost heavenly as she passed into the warm sunlight.

Howdy, y'all!  People seem to be confused about a bunch of things, so here it is:  "Always" is _not _finished.  Neither is "The Queen's Treasure."  Or "Home For Christmas."  "Always" has a looooong way to go before it's finished, and TQT is going to be about as long as "Missing Pieces," so there's a bunch left to that.  "Home" will hopefully be finished before Christmas, though I can't guarantee it, and the other two long stories are on the back burner until "Home" is done, so that I can get it in by the "deadline."  Trust me, you will _know_ when these stories are finished—I'll make sure of that.

As for "Changes," it was only supposed to be a one parter.  That's all.  But a lot of people seem to want more of it.  If everyone thinks it feels unfinished, I'll see if I can come up with a second half, but I really didn't see it as being any longer than it is.

January Marlinquin: Yeah, Helga's no movie star.  But as a director—she's commanding and brilliant.  Perfect for the job.  Arnold's cursing…well, I dunno.  I don't see him doing it in a vulgar way—more a casual, conversational tone.  And as for Helga's makeup, I see her being very put together and on top of everything, and when you think about it, makeup is just another mask for our heroine to wear.  But that's just our own personal extrapolations of the characters—you see them one way, I see them another.  No biggie.  We're all still friends here.  Yeah, Arnold's tall, just for the sake of this story—his height varies with my stories.  And the small feet was just in keeping with cannon information.  Helga's a supermodel, we all know that…lol.  I went on about Columbia for a while probably because it's my school and it's that old school pride popping up again.  Yes, the story is completely finished, but I only posted the first chapter.  The rest will be out with less of a wait, but I was away from my computer this weekend, so…  And I'm not mad, I'm flattered that you want to read my stuff so badly, and even if I was mad I wouldn't punish anyone…I'd just open up a can of whoop-ass on you!  Lol…sorry that Always and TQT aren't being churned out as fast as everyone (including me) would hope, but…blame my muse.  And I like long reviews.

extreemrandomnes: Enjoy name.  Is cute.  Me sorry.  Enjoy chapter.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!  -PI


	3. ThreeTresTrois

Author's Note: Since people were so mad at me about only posting the first chapter of this, I give you _two_ chapters tonight!  Also, this one ends in a better place than the last.  Enjoy!

Warning: This chapter contains a sex scene.  It is hardly graphic (unless you're a nun) but it's there.  You have been warned.

[3]

Arnold clinked his fork on the side of his glass for attention as he stood up.

"Okay, okay, time for the best man to speak," he announced.  The noise in the room dwindled as heads turned to face him.  He looked at Gerald and Phoebe, who couldn't seem to stop gazing at each other with silly besotted smiles on their faces.

"I remember when Gerald first told me that he liked Phoebe.  In those days people occasionally came to me for advice."  The room chuckled softly.  "He looked me in the eye, and he said—and he was nervous, which was weird, because Gerald was one cool dude in those days, and don't ask me what's happened since—he said, 'Arnold, I think I like Phoebe.'

"And I said, 'I like Phoebe, too.  She's smart and nice and funny…'  And Gerald said, 'No man, I mean, I _like_ her like her.'  And I said, 'Gerald, you're twenty-three.  You need a more mature way to express your feelings.'"

Now the crowd laughed outright, especially those who had been at P.S. 118 together.  Arnold grinned.

"Actually, we were ten.  We were ten years old, and Gerald already knew his heart.  And I remember being jealous—jealous that at such a young age, Gerald already knew who he wanted.  Because I knew him, and I knew this was not your everyday crush.

"And to tell the truth, I'm still jealous.  Because when you look at Gerald and Phoebe, you see two amazing people who are so crazy in love they can't see straight.  And that's a wonderful thing.  And it's a wonderful thing to see something so right, something that is so clearly meant to be.  And to know that you had a part in it.  And so to this day I remain proud of the fact that when Gerald told me he like-liked Phoebe, I looked him straight in the eye, and I said, 'Maybe you should wait to tell her when Helga's not around.'  To Gerald and Phoebe!"

The room erupted with applause and laughter as Helga rose, glaring at Arnold.  She waited until the noise died down before speaking.

"Thanks bundles, Arnold," she said, directing an icy stare at him that only he knew was not a joke.  "Anyway, my story's really for you, Tall Hair Boy," she said, looking at Gerald.  "See, I knew that Phoebe liked you, and—I'll admit it—I discouraged it.  I mean, you know we didn't get along—you were there.  But I remember the day we officially 'Saved the Neighborhood', and you pulled me out of that bus, and I remember wondering why you would do that for a girl you didn't even like.

"Well, I thought about it for a while, and the next morning when Phoebe came over to see if I was okay, I told her…well, I told her a few things.  Rules broken, lies revealed…"  Arnold felt a pang of guilt for teasing her.  "But I told her what you had done.  And I told her that if she really liked you, she should let you know, because sooner or later, some girl was going to snap you up."

She raised her glass.  "Now, I've no doubt I'm going to go down in history as a cold-hearted bitch who made lives miserable around me, but there's one good thing I've done in my life, for a guy who helped me out of a bus.  So I drink this toast to you, Geraldo—and to the girl who _did_ snap you up, the new Mrs. Phoebe Johansen."

Gerald looked surprised and pleased; Phoebe beamed.  It was a more serious, more sentimental toast than Arnold's, and he knew she'd put him to shame—as she intended to.  Well, Helga'd accepted an Oscar or two before this; she knew how to make speeches.  Still, he felt cheapened.

Several more speeches followed, after which the party moved out onto the dance floor, Johansens and Hyerdahls mixing with the P.S. 118 gang and Phoebe and Gerald's coworkers and friends from adulthood.  Helga avoided the dance floor—dancing wasn't exactly her "thing"—and settled down next to Rhonda and Nadine.

She let their gossip buzz in her ear as she surveyed Arnold, dancing with Jamie-O's daughter standing on his feet.  Damn him!  It wasn't fair of him to look so _good_!

She'd been so nervous she could hardly stand it, going into the anteroom before the ceremony.  Sure, she'd known, somewhere, in the back of her mind, that he was going to be here.  After all, he was Gerald's best friend—why wouldn't he make an appearance?  But she'd hoped, when she formed a concrete enough thought to hope, that maybe Jamie-O would be best man, or some random cousin she'd never met, that she didn't have to walk the Aisle of Irony with Arnold—for the second time, she reminded herself.  But this time there wasn't any idle fantasizing about married bliss with her golden boy.  This time there was a man, and a woman, and they were both used goods.  And they hated each other.  Hardly a match made in heaven.

At any rate, when Phoebe'd said his name she'd torpedoed Helga's slim grasp on illusion.  So she'd nerved herself and built up all the acting chops that she had inside of her—which was plenty, after all those years in the movie business—and played Ice Princess.  Like she simply couldn't care less whether she walked down the aisle with Arnold or Harold or the lunatic Jolly Olly Man from Brooklyn.  It was just another stroll in pink for her.

Except that it wasn't, and never could be.

He looked even better now, dancing out there with that little girl.  Arnold had always made her knees weak as a child when he'd put on a suit, even more with a tuxedo, but it wasn't really _him_.  Now, his jacket had disappeared, and his vest hung unbuttoned over a loosened tie and a half-tucked-in dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar undone.  He'd obviously attempted to tame his fantastically golden hair earlier, but it was slowly but surely returning to its normal, unruly state, which was how she liked it.  Now that he was no longer looking at _her_, his face was open and honest, his dreamer's eyes as wide and frank as they had been when he was three.

Jamie-O's daughter looked up at him adoringly as they danced, and Helga smiled ruefully.  Naturally she would fall in love with him.  Helga was far more surprised at the number of people who _hadn't_ fallen for Arnold over the years.  And Arnold's charm worked particularly well on little girls.

She wondered whether Arnold would have a daughter, what that daughter would be like.

Quickly as possible, she gunned down that train of thought.  Thinking like that could never lead to anything good.  They'd definitely hammered in the final nail in the coffin of their relationship a year ago…there was no point in putting herself through this hell again.

Still, she couldn't deny that he still had beautiful eyes…and a mighty fine ass.

As if he'd heard her less-than-demure thoughts, Arnold suddenly turned his head and looked directly at her.  _Shit_.  Okay, be discreet, be discreet…

Helga looked deliberately to the left and stared blankly at the wall.  _Oh, very cool, Pataki.  No _way_ he'd think anything weird about that._

Arnold's brow furrowed as he gazed at Helga, who was staring at the wall as if it were the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen.  Had she been staring at him?  And if she had, why?

He'd looked back at the little girl in front of him, trying to dispel thoughts of Helga.  God, she was confusing.  He'd never understood her…and he'd never known if the little things he saw were deliberate or not.  Maybe she wanted him to know she'd been staring at him.  If she'd been staring at him.  Which she might not have been.  But then why would she be staring at the wall, unless she'd suddenly averted her eyes?  _Oh, crimeney!_

Arnold froze at the last thought.  Okay, now that was a little disturbing.  _Get a grip, buddy._  And yet he let himself wander back into memory again…

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

It was, by far, the strangest interview Arnold had ever had.  Also the most pleasant.

They'd lingered over their food for three hours in Helga's Thai place, talking.  At first it was on the record, and mostly about Helga and her career, and Arnold recorded it dutifully into his tape recorder, jotting down the odd note to himself as he watched her talk.  But then the subject drifted onto their childhood, and Arnold's life, and he turned the tape recorder off.  He told Helga all about Elizabeth, and _Lars_, which she agreed was the dumbest name on the planet, hands down.  And he told her about how frustrating it got at the paper, and how lonely he got sometimes, when he rolled over in bed and Elizabeth wasn't there beside him.

She told him about the cutthroat Hollywood community, and the secrets that even the tabloids didn't suspect—the lies, the backstabbing, her own highly-publicized affairs.  He noticed, though, that she didn't ever talk of something he couldn't have guessed or found out somewhere else—nothing truly personal, nothing that was really _her_.  Was it a fluke?  Was it just that everything in her life was so publicized there was nothing private left to tell?  He doubted it.  There had always been more to Helga Pataki than met the eye, and he had a feeling there still was.  But he knew there was no chance of weaseling it out of her.  She'd tell him what she wanted to tell him, in due time.

And right now he was concerned with other things.  Like how extraordinarily blue her eyes were.  He hadn't really gotten a good look at them before, but here, squeezed into a corner at a tiny table, he was getting a nice close-up view of several things, like her perfect skin, and the few light freckles on the bridge of her nose, and the fullness of her mouth.  And those eyes—those bluer-than-the-label-on-an-Aquafina-bottle eyes, as big as a doll's, or a Disney princess'.  He couldn't rip his own away.

And there were other things.  Like how her hand would brush his oh-so-gently, or her eyes would twinkle with something he couldn't name.  Like the way she leaned forward in a way Elizabeth had told him no girl ever leaned forward unless she was intending to reveal something.  The way she caught her lip between her perfect teeth and gave him that seductive half smile that stopped his heart for a breathless moment.  Little things that made him wonder if she knew what she was doing to him—if she was doing it on purpose.

It was only when the busboys began to put up chairs at the other tables that Helga and Arnold made their exit, Helga leaving an exorbitant tip which exceeded what Arnold usually paid for the whole meal.  He'd tried to pay, or at least go Dutch, but she'd graciously refused, telling him that the restaurant was her idea, so she had to pay.  He didn't quite follow the logic, but agreed once he took a good look at the bill.

"So where are you staying?" Helga asked as they got back into the car.

"Actually, I'm not, I'm…"  Arnold glanced at his watch.  "Shit!  I totally forgot about my flight!"

Helga turned on the car.  "I can get you to the airport in three minutes in this puppy.  When's your flight?"

Arnold looked at her sheepishly.  "An hour and a half ago."

Helga rolled her eyes.  "You doofus."  She backed out of the parking lot and headed down the brightly-lit street.  "Okay, so you'll stay at the hotel with the rest of the cast and crew."

"What?" Arnold said, startled.  "Oh, no…I couldn't impose…"

Helga silenced him with a wave of her hand.  "Really, it's no trouble.  I always just rent out a couple of floors for everyone—or rather, the studio does.  I like to foster togetherness between the people making a movie.  We've got a couple of extra rooms signed up that no one's using.  You can just stay there, and fly back tomorrow."

Arnold sighed, giving up.  "All right.  My editor's gonna kill me, though."

"Not if I have anything to say about it."  For a moment Arnold caught a fleeting glimpse of Old Betsey on the steering wheel.  He smiled, but didn't say anything.

They didn't even have to check Arnold in.  Helga just asked at the desk for the key to an unoccupied room, which turned out to be a floor below Helga's suite.  Arnold insisted on walking her to her room, and so quite suddenly, they found that an awkwardness had descended between them.

"So…" Helga said, not meeting his eyes.

"Yeah…"  Suddenly Arnold laughed.  "I feel like a kid on my first date," he joked.

Helga chuckled too, relieving the tension.  "I had a really nice time tonight," she said in a simpering falsetto.

Arnold dropped his voice an octave.  "Yeah, me too, babe."

She unlocked her door and opened it.  Something about her goofiness made her unbearably fetching in that instant.  "See you in class on Monday."

He pouted.  "What, no good-night kiss?"

Helga hesitated.  "Well…"

Suddenly the game was deadly serious.  Helga took at step towards him, letting the door close behind her.  He'd never imagined eyes could be that big…

He reached for her hands, not knowing why he did.  They were warm and firm, with callused palms.  Something about the calluses gave him comfort.  _This_ was the Helga he knew, with tree-climbing hands.  Bat-wielding hands.

Her face tilted up towards him, and he had the pleasant sensation of seeing a face turned towards him like the sun, and he smiled.  Her eyes were closing now; blond lashes lay soft against her porcelain cheeks.  He bent his neck, closed his eyes, and leaned in.

A breath of silence, a frozen moment, and then their lips met, and _oh God, I've just found heaven._

They stayed like that for a moment, in the pure virgin stillness of their childhood kisses, nerving themselves for the leap.  And then—he didn't know who closed the gap, but his hands were on the small of her back and hers were clinging to his shoulder blades and her breasts were pressed against him and his pulse started to race.

They drew apart, and her eyes fluttered open, and Arnold read in them the headiest drink he'd ever tasted.  She was breathing hard, too—he could hear it in her voice.

"Do you want to come inside?" she asked softly.

Inside her room they didn't bother with a grand tour, though the suite had several rooms, or any other unnecessary preliminaries.  As the door closed behind them they were in each others' arms again, kissing with a greater sense of urgency than before.

And now she was taking his hand and leading him through the semi-dark rooms to the bed, the biggest bed he had ever seen, and now he was helping her out of her shirt, stepping out of his pants and kicking them out of the way, and the softness of her porcelain skin was all around him.

They tumbled onto the bed, a jumble of arms and legs and tousled hair in two different kinds of gold.  Arnold lost himself in the buckwheat honey-and-hay scent of her hair as his lips roamed along her milky throat.  Her hands ran along his back, and then lower…  She moaned his name, and he was sure he would die.  Later, he'd swear he saw the face of God.

Afterwards, they slid under the covers, and Helga rolled herself into the crook of Arnold's arm.  She kissed his chest gently, where her lips rested, then stretched that long, luxurious body against him like a cat.

Arnold's mind was somewhere very far away and pleasantly numb.  He wasn't worried about what their relationship meant now, or what they would say to each other in the morning.  He simply let his hand roam idly up and down her arm, now playing with a lock of hair, now stroking her back, not really thinking about anything as his body drifted closer and closer to sleep.

As darkness claimed him, he heard Helga's voice murmuring low, the sound vibrating pleasantly against his chest, a gentle tickle.

"That was off the record, right?"

His only reply was a low, tired chuckle as sleep carried him away.


	4. FourQuatroQuartre

Author's Note: Sorry it took so ridiculously long for me to get this out…I was in Florida, away from my files, and my computer at home doesn't work too well either…I need the one at school, but I won't be there until the end of January, so don't expect a lot of updates before February at the earliest.  I'm also sorry about Home for Christmas…I know I said it'd be out by Christmas, but…well, it wasn't, and I'm sorry.  I'm working on it!  I'm starting the fourth Angels book, though, so I'm gonna be focusing on that for a while…also getting my website and my fanart up…yeah.  Anyway, here's the last two chapters of Crazy For You, including the part where the title makes sense.  Enjoy!

[4]

Helga was making distracted small talk with Patty when she saw him coming towards her across the dance floor.  No, not Arnold, as she tried to pretend she didn't hope…Sid.

She'd known he was going to be annoying about this.  Lord, but the boy had no social skills.  And coming from Helga Pataki, that was saying something.

He slicked back his hair as he approached her, grinning lecherously.  His eyes were fixed on her chest.  "Hey, Helga," he said, looking like he was trying to hit on her cleavage.  "You look great."

Helga sighed gustily.  "Hello, Sid.  What's new?"

He shrugged.  "Nothing much.  Living in Cubicle Land.  Same old."  He cleared his throat.  Helga was afraid his eyes were about to burn holes in her dress.  "Listen, uh…you doing anything after this?  'Cause I was thinkin', you know…you and I might maybe get together, you know?"

"I'm the maid of honor.  I probably won't be able to leave here until after midnight."

"So?  Late at night's as good a time as any, you know?"  He wiggled his eyebrows.

Helga rolled her eyes expressively, noticing idly that Arnold was standing not far away, watching them.  "Sid, are you saying you want to have sex with me?"

Sid froze.  His eyes didn't move, although she could see his mind working overtime, trying to come up with the right answer to the unexpected question.  Out of the corner of her eye, Helga could see Arnold hiding a smile.

Sid apparently decided to keep it simple.  "Uh…well, yeah."

Shaking her head, Helga decided to let him down easy.  "Well, I have a boyfriend."

"Oh.  Well, that's cool.  That's cool.  So, my place?"

Helga's eyes widened at the audacity of the remark.  She would've gladly slapped the weasel into the half-demolished cake at the next table, but she didn't want to ruin Phoebe's wedding.  Over the top of Sid's head she caught Arnold's eye.

_Save me,_ she mouthed.  His eyebrows shot up, but he came to her rescue.

"Excuse me, Sid," he said politely.  "Helga, would you like to dance?"

She smiled a smile of pure relief.  "I'd love to, Arnold."  As she followed him out to the dance floor, she called over her shoulder, "Oh, and Sid?  Not a snowball's chance in Hell."

The song was some oldies number that Helga didn't recognize, midtempo and relaxing.  Arnold put a carefully reserved hand on her waist and took the other in his, dwarfing it.  They maintained a careful distance, stepping cautiously around the fake wooden planking.

"Thanks," Helga said quietly, not looking into his eyes.

"What was that about?"

She rolled her eyes again.  She was good at that.  "Ugh.  Sid walked in on me changing into my dress and saw me topless.  You know how your ears are supposed to ring when someone's talking about you?"  Arnold nodded.  "Well, my tits've been ringing all night."

Arnold laughed.  "I can't believe he'd be that crude."

Helga scowled.  "Uh, Arnold?  My eyes are up here.  _Here_."  She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

He blushed slightly.  "Sorry."  His face lifted, and their eyes met.

There.  There it was, what she wasn't ready to deal with again.  That softly gathering dream that she'd wanted for most of her life to be a part of.  She tried to look away, but found it impossible.

From the rainy Monday morning twenty-two years earlier, when he'd first seen her standing forlorn and alone, to this moment now, in the center of the crowded dance floor, Arnold had been startled every time she lifted her eyes to meet his—startled by the intensity of their color, the size of them, the morass of emotions he always saw.

Maybe this was the answer, the key.  Maybe this was her.  The way her thick, pale lashes, dark with mascara, dropped seductive curtains, the way she flirted every time she blinked.  The frank, unashamed stare, the openness, the courage in her gaze.  The crushed dreams, the colossal hurt he read as plainly as a book.  Her carnality, her bravery, her wounds.  And it was all wrapped up in this pristine blue package, all hidden in the sweetness of the color.

Helga was never one thing.  Hadn't he learned that by now?

She sighed, and moved closer to him, dropping her eyes again.  "Where did we go wrong, Arnold?" she asked him softly.

He let his cheek rest against the softness of her hair, smelled the flowers still woven in it.  "I don't know," he said.  A moment ago he was sure he knew everything.  "I…don't know."

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

He'd actually wound up staying in California for two weeks.  Two fabulous, glorious, heavenly weeks.  Looking back on them, they all blended into a sort of blur, but he kept one image, one clear, beautiful picture of their time together.  It was lying on her bed in the late morning, sunlight streaming between the curtains.  Her slender, graceful body lay like a rambling and bewildering poem against the cream-colored satin of the bedclothes.  Buttery hair tumbled around her neck, framed her bewitching face.  She was awake, but only just, and she was smiling at him, and her smile was the greatest gift he'd ever received.

He remembered long hours spent making love, tangled in a sweaty knot under and out of the sheets, on the floor, the couch, the balcony, the shower—anyplace imaginable, and some that weren't.  He'd known, the fourth or fifth day, that the scent of her hair would never leave him.  They'd curl together in sleep on the bed, and it felt like a honeymoon.

But it wasn't.  In Arnold's idealistic memory he knew that reality had intervened, and often.  He followed her to the set, under the guise that he was actually doing a long feature on the movie—which was also what he had proposed to his editor.  Who hadn't been very happy about Arnold suddenly going AWOL, until Helga had gotten on the phone and sweet talked him around.  Which had made Arnold unbearably jealous, and for no good reason, until Helga turned those baby blues on him with that look that said, "I belong to you," and he melted, like a lovesick sap.

They hadn't really talked, though—not much.  Well, they talked, but they didn't _talk_, if that made any sense.  They chatted—about old times, about life, about random little things—but they never talked about…what they were.  To each other, to the world.  How they felt.  Arnold got the feeling Helga didn't talk about that sort of thing easily.  She did drop unsettling comments every now and then.

"You know, Arnold," she'd said to him once, as she contemplated the cigarette in her slender fingers, "the most…_intriguing_ part of you, I think, is not how good-looking you are…but how little you're aware of it."  Like most of her random comments, it left him, the journalist, searching vainly for words.

She'd taken a drag of her cigarette, let the smoke hiss out of her nose.  She looked like a dragon when she did that—a beautiful, powerful serpent wrapped up in the guise of a porcelain doll.

Suddenly she mashed out the cigarette, grabbed her Evian and gulped it, as if to clear her mouth of the taste.  She looked at him again.

"But you're beautiful, that's what it is," she said, in such a soft voice he wasn't sure she was actually speaking to him.  "Just beautiful in such a real, honest way."  Her tone was less dragon-like, too—more human.

"Helga, I…"  He wanted to ask her something.  What, he wasn't sure, but he'd figure it out when it got to his lips.  But she'd seen the question in his eyes and slid over to him, trailed a hand down his chest, and his question was put aside until later.

Or other times, he'd wake to find her sitting up, staring at him, a frown on her face; or on the balcony, curled on a chair, a notebook in her lap.  He never saw writing on the page when he came up behind her to ask what was wrong.  And when he asked, she'd always shake her head with a falsely light "nothing" and climb back into bed, where both would pretend to sleep until the wee hours.

Then one day—the last day—he pushed it.  Maybe he shouldn't have.  Maybe everything would have worked out in time.  But he pushed it.

They were having a late, lazy breakfast in the living room of her suite.  Arnold couldn't taste a thing—he was too upset about the night before, when he thought he'd heard her crying.  He pushed the food around on his plate until it was unrecognizable.

_I have to say something_, he realized.  He looked up.

"Helga?"

Her eyes lifted to meet his, and it was then that he realized she hadn't touched a bite of her food either.  "Yeah?"

He had to be blunt, even if it killed him.  Which it just might.  "What are we?"

Helga raised an eyebrow.  "Um…bipedal warm-blooded vertebrates, if memory serves.  I haven't taken biology in a while."

He looked levelly at her, his eyes brooking no nonsense.  "Helga…"

"What?"

"You know what I mean.  You and me.  Our relationship."

She shrugged.  "You're asking _me_?  I don't know.  Friends?"  She was clearly irritated.  "More than friends?  Less?"  Her tone was sharp, now.  She clipped the words short sarcastically.  "Fuck buddies?"

He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice.  "Is that all I am to you?"  She didn't answer.  "Is it?"  She kept her mouth closed, poking moodily at her breakfast.

"Well," he said after a pause, "in that case…"  He stood up and turned to leave.

"No," she said, so softly he thought he might have imagined it.

He stopped.  "What?"

Her voice was tense, trembling.  "That's not all you are to me."

He turned back to her.  "Then what am I?"  She didn't answer, didn't look at him.  "Goddammit, Helga!"

Now she was on her feet, and her extraordinary eyes were flashing blue lightning.  "What?  _What?  _What do you want from me, Arnold?  Do you want me to say that I worship you?  That I can't live without you?  That I would crawl halfway across the world if that's where you were?"

"I just…"

"Why don't _you_ tell _me_ what we are, huh, Arnold?  Don't lay everything on me."

"Uh…"  Now that she was turning the tables on him, he found himself at a loss for words.  "Well, obviously I don't know…that's why I asked you."

Her voice dripped with disdain.  "Take a wild guess.  Go ahead—you might get the answer right.  Dare to dream."

He knew what he wanted to say.  He also knew he wasn't brave enough to say it, not with Helga standing there spitting fire.  "Uh…friends?" he proposed.  "Friends…who…who have sex?"

A muscle in her jaw jumped violently.  "_Wrong answer, buddy_," she snarled finally.  She stormed past him, into the bedroom.

He followed her, his own, slower temper rising.  "Well, what did you want _me_ to say, Helga?  That I love you?"

"No!" she cried immediately.  She threw off her robe, her nightgown, started rooting through a drawer for underwear.  He noticed that her hands were trembling.  "No," she said again, more quietly.  "I don't want you to say that.  I don't want either of us to say that."

He paused.  Then—"You did…once."

She froze, in the process of pulling on a shirt.  "That was a long time ago, Arnold.  I was nine years old, I was talking out of my head."  She finished pulling the shirt on.  "Besides, _you_ were the one who said it never happened."

"You didn't have to go along with it!"

"Yes I did!"  She stopped, breathing hard.  "What could I have said?  No, honestly, Arnold, I do love you, let's run away and get married before we're ten?  Besides, you hated me."

"I didn't hate you…"

"Well, you should have!"

If his anger was slower to react than hers was, it was also slower to fade, and he was still angry.  "Maybe you're right!" he thundered back at her.  "Maybe I should have hated you!  Then I wouldn't be standing here arguing with some emotionally-constipated drama queen who jumps into bed with me after not seeing me since she graduated from high school, and then won't even tell me that she loves me!"  He was beet red, he knew, and his fists were clenching involuntarily.  He knew that he was being irrational and cruel, but something about Helga always brought out the worst in him…and the best.  Right now, though, it was the worst.

"And what makes you so sure that I'm in love with you, Arnold?" she screamed back, matching him both for volume and irrationality.  "Maybe I just thought you'd be a good fuck!  Guess I was wrong there too!"

That was harsh.  "What else could I have expected from Helga G. Pataki?" he demanded.  "You never had a heart!  All you ever were was fists and a unibrow.  I guess somewhere along the line you got a sex drive, too, but hormones alone don't make a human being."

She reared back as if she'd been slapped.  "And what are you?  Mr. Make-Everything-Better-But-Never-Get-Emotionally-Involved?  Have you _ever_ really felt anything in your entire life?  I can't believe I have to stand here and get told that _I_ don't have a heart from a guy who pretends to be heartbroken over the girl _he_ drove away with his own apathy, just so that he doesn't have to admit that he's never really loved anyone in his life!"

"I have too loved people!" Arnold shouted indignantly.

"Dead parents don't count!" she snapped back.

Now it was his turn to feel like he'd been slapped.  "Well, they're more deserving of it than you, you frigid, mindfucking bitch!"

But she wasn't done.  "Don't you get it, asswipe?  I _did_ worship you!  I _couldn't_ live without you!  And I would crawl further than just halfway around to world to get to your stupid football-shaped head and your moronic notions!  But I wasn't good enough for you.  I was _never_ good enough for you, 'cause I didn't have all these idealistic theories and a cute, bubbly laugh.  But then all of a sudden, you come out here, looking at me like I'm the best thing since sliced bread, and what am I supposed to do?  Chat for an hour and send you on your merry way?  You were my _obsession_ for fifteen fucking years!"

She advanced on him, a finger waving in his face.  He backed away warily, but she came closer.  "But I'll tell you a secret, buddy boy: _You missed out_.  You lost your chance.  This ship has fucking sailed.  You want my love?  You want my undying devotion?  You should have grabbed for it years ago."  She paused.  "Maybe I still love you.  Maybe I always will.  And maybe I'll lay awake at night crying for the rest of my life because of you.

"But we'll never work, Arnold.  It's too late.  _You're_ too late.  And you lost your last chance just now."

She stopped, and he could see the tears bright on her cheeks.  "So go ahead and tell me that I don't have a heart, Arnold.  You should know where it is—you've had it for twenty-one years.  And I don't think I want it back."

Before he could say anything, she stormed away, grabbing her cell phone off the night stand and a pair of jeans, and slamming into the bathroom.  Arnold stood there, frozen, trying to sort out the anger, the hurt…and the truth.  And he couldn't.

He wasn't sure how long he stood there before the bathroom door opened and she handed him a slip of paper with something scrawled on it.

"Here's your flight information," she told him.  She stepped into flip-flops and picked up her keys.  "I'm going to the set.  I want you and your stuff out of here by the time I get back."  She didn't look at him.  "And don't come back.  Ever."

"Helga, I…"

She cut him off with a raised hand.  "I'd really rather not hear you right now.  Good-bye."

It was only when the door of the suite slammed that he realized what a colossal imbecile he was.

"Good-bye," he repeated, staring at the door.

extreemrandomness: It was more of a metaphor/joke/figure of speech than anything literal, you know what I mean?  I sort of left it a little open for interpretation.

January Marlinquin: Helga…well, usually I write her a little differently, but here I wanted her to sort of be Hollywood Helga, you know?  Like, with social skills?  She's got a very complicated mask on in this story, and that's part of what is throwing Arnold so far out of whack.  It's also sort of a role reversal…Helga's the one who's in control and Arnold is inexplicably pissed off.  I do love it when they bait each other…anyway, there was a nice big fight for you in this chapter, lol.

WAYAMY27NARF: Me like your reviews.  Reviews make me chuckle.  Me love Harrison Ford too.  Me would die of happiness if me saw Helga movie.  Helga movie make me chuckle.  Me definitely an idiot.

And everyone else: thanks for reviewing!  I'm glad you like it!

-PI


	5. FiveCincoCinq

[5]

The wedding band had taken a break, and a DJ was playing a song that unsettled Arnold, for some reason.  He and Helga were still on the dance floor, inexplicably—neither one seemed to want to let go.

_Swaying room as the music starts_

_Strangers making the most of the dark_

_Two by two their bodies become one_

Then he remembered.  Senior prom, eight years ago.  No one had expected Helga to come, but she, always one to defy expectations, arrived on Harold's arm, looking thoroughly disgusted with the entire concept.  She wore not her signature black, or the pink of her younger days, but a slinky red dress with a dangerously plunging back that no one else had the figure or the guts to pull off.

_I see you through the smoky air_

_Can't you feel the weight of my stare?_

Of course Harold had been stuffing his face the whole time, and Helga had been sitting at the table next to him, looking incredibly bored, when Arnold asked her to dance.  He wasn't really sure why…but he and his date had gone just as friends, and there was no reason he _couldn't_ dance with Helga.

So she'd said yes, to his surprise, and they'd danced.  And they hadn't said a single word.  And then, suddenly, prom was over, and she was gone.  And Arnold wondered why he hadn't asked her to dance sooner.

_You're so close but still a world away…_

_What I'm dying to say_

_Is that I'm crazy for you_

_Touch me once and you'll know it's true_

_I never wanted anyone like this_

_It's all brand new_

_You'll feel it in my kiss_

_I'm crazy for you…_

Arnold bent his neck a little, dropped his lips to Helga's ear.

"Did you mean it?" he asked.  "Would we really never work?"

Helga stiffened slightly.  "I…I don't know, Arnold," she said finally.  "I don't think so.  I mean…you hurt me, you know?  A lot.  And I've spent so long getting over you…I don't think I could let myself undo that again in one fell swoop."

"Does it have to be one fell swoop, though?" he pushed.  "Couldn't we sort of…stick our toes in?  Do we have to jump into the deep end all at once?"

Helga sighed.  "You know better than that," she said, still not looking at him.  "It's always been all-or-nothing with us.  It can't ever be anything else."  She paused.  "And you didn't come back."

"You told me you didn't want me to."

"I lied."

"I wanted to come back."  He stepped back, tilted her chin up so that their eyes met.  "I thought about you every day.  I didn't see anyone…afterwards.  I couldn't."

"Neither did I…" she whispered, looking like she was about to cry.  She looked away, frustrated.  "Why are you doing this, Football Head?"

_Football Head_…so she'd forgiven him…somewhere in her heart.

"Because I love you," he told her.

_Trying hard to control my heart_

_I walk over to where you are_

_Eye-to-eye we need no words at all_

_Slowly now, we begin to move_

_Every breath I'm deeper into you_

She stopped dancing.  "What?"

"You heard me."

_Soon we two are standing still in time_

_If you'll read my mind_

_You'll see I'm crazy for you_

_Touch me once and you'll know it's true_

_I never wanted anyone like this_

_It's all brand-new_

_You'll feel it in my kiss_

Slowly, he bent his head and touched his lips to hers.  Feather-light, pristine…but a kiss.  The first honest one they'd ever shared.

_You'll feel it in my kiss_

_Because I'm crazy for you_

_Touch me once and you'll know it's true_

"Arnold, it would never work," she said when they parted.

"Why not?" he asked again.

"It…it just _wouldn't_," she sighed impatiently.

"Could we fix the hurts?" he asked.  "Could we start anew?  Could I maybe…maybe bump into you by the desert table in a few minutes?  And I'd ask if you were one of Phoebe's friends.  And then we'd maybe get to talking…until I asked for your number."

Helga looked away.  "Don't do this, please…"

_I never wanted anyone like this_

_It's all brand-new_

_You'll feel it in my kiss…_

"And I'd probably call you tomorrow, all nervous, palms sweaty, and ask you to coffee.  And then we might have an amazing time, and discover…discover all the things we had in common.  And I might find out that I love the way…the way your hair falls across your neck, the way you bite your lip, the way you say my name…"

"Arnold…"

"And then maybe someday…my best man, your maid of honor, could talk about how we met again for the first time at a wedding.  And we could dance to this song…and we could dance forever."

Helga's face crumpled.  "Why do you have to _do_ that?" she demanded, half-angrily.  "Why do you have to…to be so _you_?"

"Is that good or bad?" he asked her.

"I don't _know_!" she replied, crying outright now.  He wiped a tear away.

"Please don't cry."

She didn't listen.  "And what if it doesn't work?" she wanted to know.  "What if we hurt each other worse than before?"

"You won't take that chance?" he asked.  "The Helga Pataki I knew wasn't afraid of anything."

"Except you," she whispered.

They were silent for a long moment.  "Well?" Arnold asked.

Helga shook her head, tightened her arms around his neck.  "Let's just…keep dancing," she said finally.  "Then…we'll see."

_I'm crazy for you…_

Fin, finis, finito!  You likey?  Hatey?  Lemme know!  Hope it was worth the wait…

-PI


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